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Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Review - Yo-Kai Watch is Weird/Cool/Weird and Kind of Loud

JIBANYAN!

This post is sponsored. I received product and dollars to take a look at Yo-Kai Watch and let you know what I think. The opinions are mine.

JIBANYAN! JIBANYAN! JIBANYAN! JIBANYAN! Oh, hello. John here. JIBANYAN! I just wanted to give you a small sample of what it is like to JIBANYAN! live in my home right now. JIBANYAN! The good folks from XY Media Disney XD sent over a party kit so we could watch the first few episodes of Yo-Kai Watch, a Japanese cartoon about a boy who can see mischievous spirits using a magic watch given to him by ghost named whisper that he found in a stone vending machine under a tree in a field.

Also, there is a dance. You need to see the dance. Trust me. My wife does this dance.

JIBANYAN! Oh, sorry. I forgot to mention why I keep yelling JIBANYAN! The magical watch that I mentioned? Well, we got a couple of those too. Whenever you make friends with one of the mischievous spirits in the world of Yo Kai, they give you their highly collectible spirit coin. AND GUESS WHAT! You too can collect these coins at your local toy store. These coins can then be placed in your Yo Kai Watch which will then shout the name of the character contained within. Over and over and over.

JIBANYAN! JIBANYAN! JIBANYAN! JIBANYAN!

It might sound like I am complaining, and maybe I am a little. But it’s not like this is the only toy my kids have that makes loud repetitive noises. The toys are fun, and I like anything that gets Captain and Duchess using their imaginations AND playing together. Another cool part about the toys is you can download an app that scans them in and gives you more usability. Any trepidation I had toward the toys was inversely proportionate to the kids' reaction. The kids went nuts for the toys. We got watches and spirit disks and
little figurines. We invited the neighbors over and sent a lot of it home
with them, which I am sure their parents appreciated. If he is anything like
me, they love hearing JIBANYAN! shouted over and over again.

The watches. Duchess was kind of disappointed that they didn't really let her see spirits from Japanese mythology. She got over that when she found the button that yelled JIBANYAN over and over again.

The other fun part, and the part that I enjoyed the most, is that they really seem to like this show. Before showing it to them and our neighbors at the watch party, I sat down and watched the first four episodes to make sure there wasn’t anything they couldn’t see, and aside from a Yo Kai who seems to have a butt for a head and a power that allows him to fart out his mouth, I didn’t see anything super concerning. Mostly it is just fun and weird, like a lot of the Japanese imports I grew up with.

Stone vending machine hiding under tree, as described.

The thing I like about Yo-Kai Watch compared to other “kid collects monsters to fight each other TV shows and games” is that instead of just pitting the monsters against each other to fight, Yo-Kai Watch seems to be more about helping others with common everyday situations. In the first episode Nathan, the aforementioned boy, goes home to find his parents fighting – a not uncommon situation for a lot of kids. In another episode he meets JIBANYAN, a cat who was killed by a van and is trying to get back to his owner. I can see how the show would serve as an entry point into topics that can be hard to discuss with kids.

Conclusion:

The kids want more Yo Kai Watch, and I'm inclined to give it to them. I'm not sure if we will heavily invest in the toys, but the show itself has an wacky appeal to it that I can't really explain. Sometimes it's just fun to watch weird shows with your kids.

I give the wacky/fun show 5 JIBANYANS! and the toys get 3.5 JIBANYANS! (I fully admit the kids would have given them 5, but it is my blog.)

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Disclosure

The bulk of what I write on this blog has no monetization to it. It's just my thoughts on stuff, silly stories about my kids. Occasionally I will work with brands that I like, or link to products I enjoy. Those brands pay me and when you buy stuff from those links I get an very small amount of money back. When this is the case I promise to make it obvious or let you know at the beginning of the post. This small amount of extra income is how I provide this blog to you for free. So there you go. Disclosure is disclosed. You're welcome FTC.